


backseat serenade

by bokutoma



Category: Akash: Path of the Five (Visual Novel)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, First Kiss, First Love, Ignatius is Bad at Feelings, Mutual Pining, Shyness, Truth or Dare, it’s close enough
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-18
Updated: 2019-09-26
Packaged: 2020-10-21 02:04:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,762
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20685686
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bokutoma/pseuds/bokutoma
Summary: aurora’s sick of sleeping alone[some post-route divergence spoilers]





	1. dizzy hurricane

If Aurora concentrated, she could almost remember the last time Ignatius had spoken without reservation, without stumbling over his words or turning away. It had been before the Change, certainly, but he wasn’t the type to turn gender into something divisive.

It was just...him, she supposed, but with everything the way it was, tensions blooming like Rowan’s flowers along the borders of human and Al’wani civilizations, she could no longer see a reason to suppress the urge to know him the way she once had. She and Lux had barely escaped the human village with their lives - there was no time for mending regrets if she didn’t seize it now.

So here she sat, in a circle on the floor with the boys who were more like family than anyone save her father, clinging desperately to a levity none of them felt. Only Caspian made no attempt, but he was there with them, and honestly, that was far more than anyone had bargained for.

“Do any of us even know what regular elementals do for fun?” Rowan asked, breaking their silence in the way he usually did. It made nostalgia bubble in Aurora’s throat; nobody knew how the following days would play out.

“Probably some inane bonding activity,” Caspian muttered. “Honestly, what possessed any of us to agree to this?”

“Come now, darling, it’s rude to say no to a lady, especially when she looks so serious.” And if she had hoped for a lack of concern from Rocco, at least, those hopes were dashed by the line of tension that ran through him even as he tossed his hair. “Besides, even Iggy is having fun, and we can’t take that away from him.”

“For the love of the Goddess, would you _quit_ calling me Iggy?”

They sat there in silence for a time, somewhere between grateful and irritable, and the tension was so thick that Aurora could no longer bear it. When she clapped her hands together, Ignatius and Rowan both startled.

“Enough! Surely one of us knows a game or two we can play?”

And with enough coaxing, it turned out that they knew plenty, even if most of Rocco’s had to be tossed aside immediately. Though they skipped around, they finally landed on Truth or Dare, despite Caspian’s protests of childishness. She rested comfortably now, head pillowed by Lux’s thigh - if there was no time for regrets, then there certainly wasn’t time for a pretense of modesty when it came to her best friend.

“Truth,” Rocco began, waggling his eyebrows comically as he leaned toward Caspian. “Or dare?”

“Dare,” came the response, placid as anything, and though Aurora perhaps shouldn’t have been surprised, there was a certain oddity to it, as though his own careful construct was being dismantled before her eyes.

“Streak in front of the elder’s rooms.” Maybe it’s just the situation, bleak with very little promise of retribution from the humans, but Caspian strips with no question. She only sees the flash of stomach before Lux is covering her eyes with one of his massive hands, protective to the end.

_Maybe_, she thinks, _it wouldn’t be so bad to have a look._

Her mind turns to Ignatius, sputtering his disgust, and wonders what it might be like to see him laid bare.

Though no one had said anything outright, she knew what her classmates thought happened out there between her and Lux. They’d always been familiar, and, bless his heart, her best friend didn’t quite seem to grasp their implications, unintentionally furthering their gossip.

Her heart, however, belonged to Ignatius, equal parts steadfast and hot-tempered. If he felt the same way, then there were a billion firsts she wanted to have before a possible death at the hands of humans.

Caspian returned, flushed and sweating, and her eyes widened before Lux could cover them again. Ignatius was back to grumbling, and his knee knocked against hers, sending a river of heat through her as Lux let her see again. He mumbled an apology, and she thought she caught a hint of blush on his cheeks.

It was Rowan’s turn now, Caspian having abstained out of a sense of superiority, and she locked eyes with Rocco, hoping he’d understand the silent begging in her eyes as she gestured subtly toward the man beside her. His gaze widened in shock, but before she could relish the idea of catching Rocco off guard, his expression morphed into one of devilish glee as he leaned over to whisper in Rowan’s ear.

An unnaturally wide grin split Rowan’s face as well, and he leaned forward, batting his lashes at Ignatius. “Natty,” he cooed. “Truth or dare?”

Ignatius flushed with anger, but he stayed quiet, clearly weighing his options: admit to something, or embarrass himself and get it over with?

When it came to Rocco and Rowan, the choice was simple.

“Dare,” Ignatius spat, sinking into himself until his nose was barely visible above the collar of his sweater.


	2. little hand grenade

“_Dare_?” Rocco cooed. “Oh Iggy, you continue to surprise me. They say that’s a sign of a good relationship, you know.”

“Shut up,” Ignatius snarled, glowering at everyone. “I just want to get this over with.”

“But Iggy,” Rowan pouts, his lips drawing down in a comical caricature of offense. “I put a whole lot of effort into making my dare the best it could be for you. You’re hurting my feelings!”

“Good.”

“Cease this pointless banter and get on with the dare,” Caspian said, and Aurora couldn’t help but be impressed by the way he managed to look down his nose at the rest of them even when he was leaning back against an errant chair. “You’re wasting time and spoiling the spirit of the game.”

If she snorted from her position on Lux’s thigh, that was no one’s business but her own - if her best friend would stop laughing, that was.

Rowan cleared his throat with enough dramatics that Lux threw a pillow at him. “Anyway,” he started, glaring pointedly at the light elemental. “My dare is...kiss Aurora!”

One would have thought there was a limit to how red a fire elemental could get, but Ignatius was proving every assumption Aurora had entirely wrong. She had never seen a volcano before, but he looked dangerously close to erupting.

“What the fuck?” he seethed, and she couldn’t help the way she flinched at that. Lux noticed, and he stroked a subtle hand through her hair the same way he had for years, soothing like nothing else. “I’m not gonna kiss her if she’s dating Lux!”

Lux jolted with enough force to make Aurora hit her head on the floor.

“Geez, Lux,” she grumbled, but he was staring at Ignatius with shock and something else she couldn’t quite place.

“What do you mean?” Lux asked, eyes wide as saucers. “Since when have we been, uh, together?”

There was the sort of dumbfounded silence that was only possible when everyone in the room was caught in a monumental misunderstanding. Of course, they were, so that made sense.

Rocco was the first to break the silence. “Darling, I think Iggy dearest means exactly what he said. Some of us may have been under the impression that you and Aurora were in a relationship. They say shared trauma is a very natural foundation for a relationship, after all.”

“Where do you get this nonsensical information?” Caspian needled.

“Why would you-“

“Careful, Lux.” Aurora looked up at her best friend with narrowed eyes. “Choose your words with care.”

“I just...” The furious blush on his face was frankly adorable. “We haven’t been acting any differently.”

Aurora sat up and patted his knee. “Don’t worry, they just don’t get out much.”

“On the contrary, darling, I’m out quite a bit.”

Lux subsided at that, but she kept an eye on him anyway; poor boy was sensitive enough without the rest of them giving him heart problems.

“Back to the dare, then,” Rowan said, clapping his hands together. “See, Natty? You can kiss away to your heart’s content.”

If he sank any further into his sweater, Ignatius would have been swallowed whole. “Fuck all of you guys.”

And yeah, maybe that stung a little, but Aurora could be patient if pressed.

“Would it make you feel better if we didn’t do it in front of everyone?” she asked, reaching a tentative hand out. He didn’t flinch away when she rested it on his arm, so she took that as a good sign. “Truth be told, it would make me feel better too.”

“I see no problem with that,” Caspian interjected, probably to avoid another idiotic squabble. “It’s far more polite than putting such a display on for all of us to see.”

“That would have been half the fun, sugar,” Rocco muttered darkly, but he didn’t protest any further.

Ignatius’s hand encircled her wrist with more than she’d ever seen him give, save for perhaps his art supplies, and he tugged her up wordlessly.

“Keep playing without us!” she said, hoping to dispel the blush she knew she must be sporting. “I don’t want the fun to stop on our account.”

Rocco and Caspian both looked to be on the verge of saying something pointed and nasty, but Lux and Rowan beamed, and Aurora was warm with possibility.

The hallway outside was quiet, and for the first time, she felt the full weight of what was about to happen. Though it was her first kiss, she was confident she was making the right choice, but reading the tense line of Ignatius’s shoulders, she wondered it she hadn’t pushed this too far.

“Ignatius,” she said softly, reaching out again. “We don’t have to do this if you don’t want to.”

The heavy line of his eyebrows as he looked at her was impossible to decipher. “Do _you_ want to?”

“Huh?” She probably rivaled him now, heat flushing through her at lightning speed.

“It’s not even your dare.” He wasn’t quite looking her in the eyes, staring somewhere a little left of her, and the serious tone of his voice made something in her ache. “Why are you going along with this?”

There were a thousand lies she could have given, every one of Rocco’s poor jokes and stories coming to mind, but he deserved better than that. If she liked him - and Goddess, she did - then she had to be honest.

“Because I want to kiss you.”

Ignatius’s face grew harder at that, and guilt and fear gnawed at Aurora’s stomach. This had been a ridiculous idea from the outset, one where she hadn’t even stopped to consider his feelings at all. If he hated her for that...he had always been hard for her to read.

She was grateful for the dark solitude of the hallway now, because it was all too easy to retreat in her own thoughts as she waited for him to gather his. She studied him now, eyes wide and vulnerable, in a way she might never get to again, if he reacted poorly. Everything, from the way his sweater clung to lean muscles to the soft wave of his hair, was precious to her.

“Hey,” Ignatius said.

When she looked up, he was just in front of her, and then his lips were on hers.


	3. aren’t you sick of sleeping alone?

If Aurora could have chosen a moment to freeze and live in eternally, this one would have been a top contender.

Ignatius was warm against her, and though she should have expected that, he didn’t burn like she thought he might. Instead, he was like a hearth, and as she brought her arms up to look around his neck, she thought she’d like to bask in him for as long as he’d let her.

The kiss was gentle, both of them clumsy with inexperience, but she wouldn’t have traded it for anything. If there was a moment to regret anything, she knew it couldn’t possibly be now. As long as her life had led her here, then she could accept those consequences.

They parted, breathless, and though she could feel the tremble of Ignatius’s hand, clumsy and hesitant on her hip, she didn’t break away. Their eyes met, and lightning crawled down Aurora’s spine, bright and electric. He was handsome; she had noticed that long ago, but here and now, with the light dim and the whole world reduced to the two of them, he was the most beautiful person in the world.

“So?” he mumbled, and for the first time, her mind cleared enough to process the redness that had crept to the tips of his ears. “Was that everything you wanted?”

_Yes_, she wanted to say. _No_.

Instead, she settled on, “For now.”

He looked at her then, really stared in a way that made her feel as though she’d been laid bare (not the time to be thinking about getting naked), and she wondered if he liked what he saw.

“Why-“ He cut himself off, embarrassed, and the way her thumb rubbed soothing circles against the junction of his neck and shoulder felt all too emotional. “Why me?”

“What do you mean?”

To Aurora, it looked like his temper and unease were warring in him. “Dammit, why did you want to kiss me?”

They were close in height as it was, but she tugged him into eye contact, a wave of gentle firmness sweeping through her. “Because I like you, Ignatius. You’re funny and charming even when you don’t mean to be, and you care a lot about people even if you don’t always like showing it. You have the sort of quiet confidence that I really admire. I don’t care what your experience is or what you look like, though you’re _very_ attractive. You’re just...you.”

He swallowed hard, and if she loved him in that moment, she’d keep that a secret closely guarded.

“I mean it,” she said. “I don’t know what you’re thinking about right now, but you’re the one for me. I can’t say what’s going to happen in these next few days, but I don’t want anything to happen to either of us without getting the chance to tell you.”

“I like you too.” It was an accidental confession, she gathered, considering the audible gulp he made. “I think I always have, really. You’ve always been...special, I guess, and it was hard to talk to you without feeling stupid. I already got enough of that from Rocco and Rowan. They’re not bad, it just made it hard to talk to you without feeling like they were going to dissect every aspect of our conversation.”

“I’m going to kick their assed.”

He laughed at that, and it was a louder sound than she had been expecting, alone and boisterous in a manner she had never really heard from him before.

“I like that,” she said, thoughtless and bold.

“Make sense, please.” The hand at her hip pinched her, and she yelped. “I spend enough time interpreting our classmate’s bullshit without adding you to the mix. Just because I think you’re pretty doesn’t mean I want to deal with that.”

She glowed at that, though she knew he hadn’t necessarily meant it that way. Still, compliments were a rarity from him, knowing him reticent he was, how nervous he became when confronted with the idea of honest emotion.

“I just like it when you laugh,” she said, letting him go to tangle her hand in his free one. “It sounds nice, and I never really hear it anymore.”

There was nothing he could say to that; he gaped at her, the flush that had receded flying back onto his face and creeping down his neck.

Whatever he would have said was lost as pearls of raucous laughter floated beneath the doorframe, Rocco’s high cackle chief among them.

“Do we have to go back in there?” Ignatius mumbled, drawing her closer with what seemed like subconscious embarrassment. “I don’t want to deal with all of that right now.”

“Are we going to deal with it?” She raised an eyebrow, attempting nonchalance even as her heart beat rapidly in her chest.

“I want this to be a thing.” His hands were trembling again, and she felt a flush overcome her as well. “I want us to be something we have to talk to the rest of those assholes about.”

If Aurora was the kind of girl for poetry, her heart would be a bird, soaring through the air and nestling in his tentative smile.

“Yeah,” she said, breathless. “I want that too.”

**Author's Note:**

> follow me for more shenanigans on twitter @kingblaiddyd
> 
> make sure to give the akash twitter and tumblr some love too!


End file.
